Touring the Organizer

The Organizer is a separate part of Elements from the Editor, whose purpose is tohelp you manage your growing collection of digital photos.In this chapter, I'll show you how to get your photos into the Organizer fromyour camera, from your computer, or from some other locations. But first I wouldlike to give you an overview of the Organizer, so you have a general sense ofwhat it offers and how it's laid out.I'll go into lots more detail about each of the features and functions that I'llintroduce in this movie.In Elements 10, both the Windows version and the standard Mac version of Elementsinclude an Organizer.

The only version that doesn't have an Organizer is the Editor-only version forMac users, which is only available at the Mac App Store.I explained how to open the Organizer in the last chapter.My Organizer is opened to its default view called Thumbnail view, which displaysa thumbnail copy of all the photos and any other media files in the currently open catalog.As I have explained, catalogs are databases on which the Organizer is built, andit's the catalogs that keep track of your photos and other media files.

The name of the current catalog is displayed down at the far bottom-leftcorner of the Organizer.This is the Exercise Files catalog that I showed you how to make in the last chapter.This large area on the left side of the Organizer is called the Media Browser.It displays a thumbnail-size copy of each photo that I brought into this catalog,and each thumbnail is surrounded by a gray frame.The purpose of the frame is mostly to make it easier to see the photos.Over on the right side of the Organizer is a column called the Task pane, whichcontains four tabs, each of which represents a category of tasks that you canperform in the Organizer:Organize, Fix, Create, and Share photos.

To use the features in any one of these categories, you'll click its tab.The Organize tab is currently selected. For example, when the Organize tab isselected the Task Pane displays organizing features, like Albums and Keyword Tags down here.These panels are flexible; they collapse and they expand.So, if I wanted to give more room to my Keyword Tags panel, for example, I wouldgo up to the Albums panel and click this arrow to collapse the Albums panel.I will click the arrow again to expand that panel. And I can rearrange theamount of space allotted to each panel by moving my mouse over these dotsbetween the panels. When it changes to a double-pointed arrow, I'll click and drag.

Let's take a quick look at these other tabs.If I click on the Fix tab, the Task pane changes to display controls forperforming some basic photo corrections without having to go into the Editor.If I click on the Create tab, I can see a list of creative photo projects that Ican perform from the Organizer. And when I click on the Share tab, I can accessdifferent ways to share my photos.There are couple of bars at the top of the screen. There is a typical menu barhere, and on the other side of the menu bar there are options for signing upfor and signing in with an Adobe ID, in order to get access to additional online services.

And there's the all important Undo button and a Redo button.Here is the menu from which you can change displays from the default Thumbnailview to other views, like Folder Location view, Date view, Full Screen view, andCompare view, all of which we'll be talking about.The next bar under the menu var has controls for changing the way that photosare displayed in the Media Browser.There's a Sort menu here which changes the order in which thumbnails are displayed.These sort options change depending on which view of the Organizer you haveselected from the Display menu.

This icon with corner brackets is a shortcut to Full Screen view, where you canorganize and edit selected photos, as we will see later.Then there are the Sizing controls, which are important because you'll use them a lot.Dragging the Size slider over to the right increases the size of the thumbnailsin the Media Browser and going the other way decreases those thumbnails, so thatyou can see more of them.To make the thumbnails as small as possible so I can see the most thumbnails, Iwill click this Foursquare icon. And if I want to see one photo just as big as Ican in the Organizer, I'll select it and I will click the button on the otherside of the slider, which takes me to this view called Single Photo view.

When I'm in Single Photo view in the Organizer I can navigate to the next photoby clicking the right arrow key on my keyboard, or go back the other way byclicking the left arrow key.I'm going to click the foursquare again to go back to the smallest view of the thumbnails.There is one more way to get to Single Photo view and this is really handy, andthat's just to double-click a photo thumbnail here in the Media Browser.The next icons in the bar next to the Sizing slider are the Rotate icons.

These come in handy if a photo comes into the Organizer turned the wrong way.Then you can rotate it right or left to get it straight up. And over on the leftside of the bar is the place to access the Organizer's powerful search featuresfor finding particular photos.And then this big arrow can take you back to the way your Organizer was lastdisplayed and forward again if you want.So that's an overview of the main features and functions of the Organizer, whichwe will look at in lots more detail in movies to come.In the rest of this chapter, I am going to show you how to get your own photosinto the Organizer from your camera, from your computer, and from externaldrives, so that you can take advantage of the powerful photo-management featureshere in the Organizer.

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Author

Released

3/12/2012

In this course, author Jan Kabili introduces the photo organizing, editing, and sharing features of Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, the less expensive version of Photoshop that’s ideal for casual photographers who want to achieve professional results. The course covers importing, organizing, and finding photos with the Organizer. It explains how and when to use each of the editing workspaces—from the simple Quick Fix and Guided Edit workspaces to the Full Edit workspace for enhancing your photos—including making photo corrections, retouching, compositing images, and adding text. The final chapter offers creative ways to share photos with Elements, including print projects like greeting cards, calendars, and books, emailing photos, and posting them on Facebook and Flickr.